2020-2021 Visiting Faculty & Courses

Mor is a trained sociologist (M.A.) and an urban planner (PhD), specializing in Israeli cities and their populations. She is currently a professor at Technion University. She will teach at UCSD for the 2020-2021 academic year, using Israeli cities as case studies in her classes. Mor will arrive in August with her husband and two-year-old son.

Ori Elon, SDSU

Ori is the creator and screenwriter of Shtisel, the world-wide hit, whose third season will start streaming on Netflix this fall! The series won 17 Israeli Academy Awards, including best series and best screenplay. He will be a visiting professor at SDSU, teaching screenwriting and leading private MGSDII Salon Series and community events.

Yuval Gadot, UCSD, 2021 Winter Quarter

Yuval heads the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures at Tel-Aviv University. Since 2013, he led the excavations at the City of David. His research in Jerusalem includes excavations of the ancient core. His course is titled, “Jerusalem, al-Quds, Yerushalim – Complexity of Archaeology in the Holy City Today in Modern Israel.” Stay tuned for private MGSDII Salon Series and community events with the world famous archaeologist.

2019-2020 Visiting Faculty & Courses

Shuki is an Israeli television creator and screenwriter. He is a graduate of the Utniel Yeshiva and the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, where he majored in screenwriting. He is known for his hit Israeli television series “Nuyork,” “Urim VeTumim,” “Giora’s Wife,” and “A Touch Away”. He is regarded for his innovative social media productions including ones streamed on Soda Stream. Shuki is one of the writers for the HBO series “Our Boys,” which premiered August 2019.

Eran Feitelson, SDSU, 2019 Fall Semester

Eran is a Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A previous chair of the Department of Geography, he was head of the Federmann School of Public Policy and Government from 2004 to 2009. Currently, he is head of the new Advanced School for Environmental Studies. He has published extensively on environmental policy, transport policy, environmental planning, and water policy issues. In addition to his academic work, Eran Feitelson has participated in several national and regional planning teams in Israel and has been a member of many national committees. He has also served as chair of the Israeli Nature Reserves and National Parks Commission for ten years. He holds an MA in geography and economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University.

Nitzan Gilady, CSUSM, 2020 Spring Semester

Nitzan is a graduate of the high art school “Thelma Yelin” (Israel) and the Academy of arts “Circle in the Square” (New York). He is director/producer of the documentary films “Jerusalem Is Proud To Present”, “In Satmar Custody” and “The Last Enemy”. His films have received 13 international awards, participated in over 120 international film festivals and broadcast in prestigious TV channels over the world (among them are: Sundance channel and ZDF-ARTE). His TV work includes: “Singing To Oblivion – The Story of Miri Aloni”, “Do Not Call Me Black 2008” and “Dark southern deal”. The short fiction drama “Queens up” directed by Gilady has participated at the international Jerusalem Film Festival and received an Audience award at Sedicicorto – Forli International film festival. He is currently working on his next feature length film.

Luba Levin-Banchick (Bar-Ilan University) is a political scientist and historian, studying the evolution of conflict and peace in contemporary international relations of the Middle East. Her expertise is in the field of global and regional security, international crisis escalation and recurrence, domestic and transnational terrorism, cooperation and violence between rivalries, and nonstate actors. In 2017, she won the Teaching with Impact Best Syllabus prize from the Israel Institute for the course she developed on “Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Israel.”

Jay Rothman, UC San Diego, 2019 Fall Quarter

Jay Rothman is a scholar-practitioner of creative conflict engagement. He is the conductor of the ARIA Group, Inc. which supports individuals, groups, organizations and nations engage identity-based conflict creatively. He spent the last seven years teaching and guiding action research projects in Arab-Jewish relations within Israel and between Israelis and Palestinians in the City of Jerusalem. Rothman is the author of dozens of journal articles about conflict resolution and participatory evaluation, and five books, including, most recently, Rothman, J. (2018). Re-Envisioning Conflict Resolution: Vision, Action and Evaluation in Creative Conflict Engagement. London: Routledge. He has trained, facilitated and mediated internationally for several decades, led workshops and given keynote presentations at numerous conferences and convocations in more than a dozen countries.

Shimon Shetreet, UC San Diego, 2019 Fall Quarter

Shimon Shetreet is a Professor of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He holds the Greenblatt chair of public and international law and is the head of the Sacher Institute of Legislative Research and Comparative Law. He has held high public offices. Between 1988 and 1996 he served as Member of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament. His past government positions included a cabinet Minister where he served as Minister of Economy and Planning, Minister of Science and Technology, and Minister of Religious Affairs. In addition to his distinguished academic career and his public offices, he also held high business positions including member of the board of Bank Leumi and Chairman of the Board of Mishaan.

Marik Shtern (Ben Gurion University) is a researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, where his field of research is the geography of Jewish-Arab relations in Jerusalem. He specializes in the sphere of community empowerment and strategic consulting for third sector organizations (civil society) in the fields of social and political change in Jerusalem.

Gilad Shtienberg, UC San Diego and SDSU, AY 2019-2020

Gilad Shtienberg (University of Haifa) studies long-term climate change in Israel and neighboring lands as a model for more general issues of global environmental change. He specializes in the understanding theoretical and practical aspects of the landscape changes that occur in the dynamic environments of the coast zone. His recent projects focus on human settlement during the Biblical periods along Israel’s northern Mediterranean coast.

Moshe was the head writer for Fauda, the enormously successful television series broadcast in Israel. In 2016, Fauda became the first Israeli series to be released as a Netflix Original. He has written many other screenplays for film and television, most recently for a documentary on the 1972 hijacking of a Sabena Airways flight bound for Israel. He began his career as a journalist working at Maariv, one of Israel’s leading Hebrew-language daily newspapers.

2018-2019 Visiting Faculty & Courses

Erez Ben-Yosef, UC San Diego, AY 2018-2019

Erez Ben-Yosef (Tel Aviv University) is a professor in the department of archaeology and the graduate program in archaeology and archaeomaterials at Tel Aviv University. He is best known for leading 21st century digs at the ancient copper mines in Israel’s Timna Valley where he made new discoveries concerning the mystery of King Solomon’s Mines. An article on his findings was recently published in National Geographic.

Yehuda Goodman (Hebrew University) is a professor in the department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His fields of interest are psychological anthropology, medical anthropology, and anthropology of religion. His research focus is on the ways identities are formed, manufactured and negotiated in the contexts of social and political contestations. Most recently, he has studied Jewish conversion issues among Russian and Ethiopian immigrants in Israel.

Gilad Shtienberg, UC San Diego, AY 2018-2019

Gilad Shtienberg (University of Haifa) studies long-term climate change in Israel and neighboring lands as a model for more general issues of global environmental change. He specializes in the understanding theoretical and practical aspects of the landscape changes that occur in the dynamic environments of the coast zone. His recent projects focus on human settlement during the Biblical periods along Israel’s northern Mediterranean coast.

Marik Shtern, Post-Doctoral Fellow (Ben Gurion University) is a researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, where his field of research is the geography of Jewish-Arab relations in Jerusalem. He specializes in the sphere of community empowerment and strategic consulting for third sector organizations (civil society) in the fields of social and political change in Jerusalem.

Luba Levin-Banchick, San Diego State University, AY 2018-2019

Luba Levin-Banchick (Bar-Ilan University) is a political scientist and historian, studying the evolution of conflict and peace in contemporary international relations of the Middle East. Her expertise is in the field of global and regional security, international crisis escalation and recurrence, domestic and transnational terrorism, cooperation and violence between rivalries, and nonstate actors. In 2017, she won the Teaching with Impact Best Syllabus prize from the Israel Institute for the course she developed on “Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Israel.”

Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz, San Diego State University, Spring 2019

Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz (Tel Aviv University) teaches screenwriting at the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University and is one of the founders of the Screenwriting Program at the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem. She has been a writer on several television series, directed documentaries and also served as a script editor on two series. She is well known in Israel for the drama “A Touch Away” and the documentary,” A Place Under the Sun.” She was Editor-in-Chief at Keter Publishing House, one of the largest publishers in Israel, and has edited books by celebrated writers, including Amoz Oz, Shemi Zarhin, and Nava Semel.

2017-2018 Visiting Faculty

Tamar Arieli, San Diego State University, AY 2017-2018

Tamar Arieli is the Head of the Conflict Management Program at the Tel-Hai College, Israel. She formerly served as a lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya (IDC) and at Indiana University, Bloomington (2010-2011). Arieli’s academic background combines political geography, regional and urban planning with the study of conflict and cooperation. She analyzes economic, social, and environmental aspects of life in border and peripheral regions, where social and political conflict may compromise prospects of regional development and social integration. Her past research involved extensive field work in Israel, Jordan, the West Bank and the Gaza strip as well as along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Nir Bergman, San Diego State University, Fall 2017

Nir Bergman is one of Israel’s most acclaimed directors. His feature films have won awards at some of the most prestigious international festivals. His film “Broken Wings” won the Best Film at the Jerusalem Film Festival, the Grand Prix at the Tokyo International Film Festival, Best Debut Feature at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival Panorama Audience Award. It also won the Israel Academy Awards Prize for the Best Director, Screenplay, Picture, Cinematography, Actress and Supporting Actress. “Broken Wings” has been distributed in the U.S.A, England, Germany, Mexico, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Greece Romania and others.

Adi Hercowitz-Amir UC San Diego, AY 2017-2018

Adi Hercowitz-Amir received her PhD in Sociology from The University of Haifa, Israel in August 2017. Her PhD dissertation focuses on reception of asylum seekers and refugees. She holds a B.A. degree in Sociology and Anthropology, Communication and Journalism from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and an M.A. degree in Sociology and Anthropology, majoring in Organizational Studies from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Morad Elsana, California Western School of Law, AY 2017-2018

Morad Elsana earned his S.J.D. from the American University Washington College of Law. Previously, he served as Staff Attorney and Director at the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Adalah, Israel (Negev Office) (2011-2009). Elsana specializes in international and comparative law and human rights, and recent publications include “The Recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ Land: Application for the Customary Land Rights Model on the Arab-Bedouin Case in Israel” (Georgetown Journal of Law & Modern Critical Race Perspectives, 2015)

David Ofek, San Diego State University, Fall 2017

David Ofek is a renowned writer and director. His feature-length documentary “No. 17” was featured in MoMA’s New Directors/New Films series and has been screened at over 80 international festivals. Among his other famous works are the TV mini-series “Melanoma My Love,” a poignant and revealing portrait of a man who loses his wife to cancer; “The Ulpan” (A Hebrew Lesson), a thought-provoking look at the problems of several immigrant students in a Hebrew language ulpan; and “Nicolai and the Law of Return,” which was awarded Best Documentary at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2008. Bergman and Ofek will be team teaching a Screenwriting class in Fall 2017 in the English department.

2016-2017 Visiting Faculty

Oded Brosch, San Diego State University, Winter and Spring 2017

Oded Brosh is a political scientist from IDC Herzliya who specializes in security studies, specifically nuclear politics, strategy, deterrence, proliferation, and related WMD issues. A Senior Research Fellow at IDC Herzliya’s Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS), he is the author of “IAEA 26 February 2016 Iran Inspection Report Summary” (IPS Publications, 2016) and “Iran in 2025: Four Scenarios” (IPS Publications, 2015).

Dana Ivgy, San Diego State University, Spring 2017

Ivgy starred most recently in “Zero Motivation,” which won Best Narrative Feature and the Nora Ephron Prize at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, and for which she received a Best Actress Award (her second) from the Israel Film Academy. Variety cites her acting as “so natural, it’s hard to believe it’s even a performance.” For 10 years, she has also been performing internationally with the Israeli stage comedy troupe Tziporela, for which she serves as artistic director. She will be a Schusterman Visiting Israel Artist at San Diego State University from January 15 to May 5, 2017.

Adi Shany, UC San Diego, Doctoral Fellow

Shany earned her Ph.D. in Economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Specializing in the economics of education and human resources, her recent publications include “Out of Africa: Human Capital Consequences of In Utero Conditions” (National Bureau of Economic Research Working Papers, 2016 – with Victor Lavy and Analia Schlosser).

Matthew Nanes, UC San Diego, Doctoral Fellow

Discipline: Political Science

Nanes’ dissertation examines the effects of ethnic and religious inclusiveness in the police and domestic security forces in divided societies.

Information for Professors

Research Grant Opportunities

Mini Grants

These grants are for co-curricular development activities and library resources to help enhance the understanding of Israeli culture, economy, society, history, and politics. Click HERE for more information.

Research Grants

These grants facilitate the research and writing of books or scholarly articles that make an original contribution to the field of Israel Studies and promote a greater understanding of modern Israel. Click HERE for more information.

Visiting Israeli Faculty, Scholars, and Artists

The MGSDII is proud to partner with the Israel Institute in bringing the most talented Israeli faculty, scholars, and artists to San Diego. For a full list of visiting faculty and scholars, please click HERE. For a full list of visiting artists, please click HERE. If you would like to arrange a guest lecturer with any visiting faculty or artist, please contact Mitchell Price at mitchell@leichtag.org for more information.

Additionally, we welcome the opportunity to partner with you to bring faculty, scholars, and artists to San Diego to teach university courses. For more information, please click HERE.

Conference Opportunities

35th Annual Meeting of The Association for Israel Studies

This summer, the Kinneret College in Israel is hosting the 35th Annual Meeting of The Association for Israel Studies, June 24-26, 2018. The annual AIS conference is hosted each year by a different academic institution, in collaboration with the AIS Board. The theme of the conference is Images and Realities: Land of Promise to Startup Nation?

If this is your first time to the AIS Conference, we will provide an $800 grant toward registration and travel. If this is not your first AIS Conference, we will provide a grant for the conference registration.

Faculty Trips to Israel

If you would like more information on how to arrange a professor lead student academic trip to Israel, tailored to your discipline or academic department, please contact Mitchell Price at mitchell@mgsdii.org.